Georgia appeals child support ruling

State attorneys are appealing a judge's order that favored five fathers who are targeting Georgia's practice of jailing parents who don't pay child support.

The Georgia Attorney General's office on Monday filed a motion that said there's an "epidemic" of parents who fail to pay their child support. It said the men were jailed because of the "consequences of their own poor decision-making."

The five fathers claim in the lawsuit that jailing parents who can't afford to pay child support creates a modern day debtor's prison. They want to force Georgia to provide poor defendants with attorneys at child support hearings.

The men recently won a court battle when a judge allowed thousands of other parents who were imprisoned for failing to pay the child support join their lawsuit.